Designing Patchy Interactions to Self-Assemble Arbitrary Structures

Romano, Flavio; Russo, John; Kroc, Lukas; Šulc, Petr

doi:10.1103/physrevlett.125.118003

Cited by 35 publications

(61 citation statements)

References 50 publications

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“…In order to address this question, we considered a two-component system of tetrahedral patchy particles where the four patches are of distinct “colors,” allowing for the formation of bonds only between patches of the same color, provided that the patches belong to particles of different species. This two-component system of “chromatic” patchy particles, which resembles systems that have previously been investigated for the self-assembly of a diamond crystal ( 6 , 30 , 31 ), maintains the same ring selection rules previously imposed to favor crystallization, while increasing the specificity of the interactions. Therefore, we might expect the thermodynamic driving force for crystallization in such a system to be even greater than the two-component system where the patches are not distinguished ( 30 ).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 90%

“…Much effort has been placed in devising fabrication routes to diamond-structured colloidal crystals, driven by their applications in visible photonics ( 1 , 2 ). In this context, the self-assembly of submicrometer colloidal particles has long been recognized as a promising scalable bottom-up approach ( 3 – 6 ). In this endeavor, a variety of designer building blocks with tunable interparticle interactions have been synthesized over the years, leading to recent success in their self-assembly into diamond-structured crystals ( 7 , 8 ).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Facile self-assembly of colloidal diamond from tetrahedral patchy particles via ring selection

Neophytou

Chakrabarti

Sciortino

2021

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Diamond-structured crystals, particularly those with cubic symmetry, have long been attractive targets for the programmed self-assembly of colloidal particles, due to their applications as photonic crystals that can control the flow of visible light. While spherical particles decorated with four patches in a tetrahedral arrangement—tetrahedral patchy particles—should be an ideal building block for this endeavor, their self-assembly into colloidal diamond has proved elusive. The kinetics of self-assembly pose a major challenge, with competition from an amorphous glassy phase, as well as clathrate crystals, leaving a narrow widow of patch widths where tetrahedral patchy particles can self-assemble into diamond crystals. Here we demonstrate that a two-component system of tetrahedral patchy particles, where bonding is allowed only between particles of different types to select even-member rings, undergoes crystallization into diamond crystals over a significantly wider range of patch widths conducive for experimental fabrication. We show that the crystallization in the two-component system is both thermodynamically and kinetically enhanced, as compared to the one-component system. Although our bottom-up route does not lead to the selection of the cubic polytype exclusively, we find that the cubicity of the self-assembled crystals increases with increasing patch width. Our designer system not only promises a scalable bottom-up route for colloidal diamond but also offers fundamental insight into crystallization into open lattices.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 90%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Facile self-assembly of colloidal diamond from tetrahedral patchy particles via ring selection

Neophytou

Chakrabarti

Sciortino

2021

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…Similarly, a recent paper introduced a scheme to design patchy particle systems (without torsions) to stabilize a target crystal by systematically increasing the specificity (including by introducing new particles types) until only the target structure could assemble. 3…”

Section: Effects Of Torsionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

How to design an icosahedral quasicrystal through directional bonding

Noya

Wong

Llombart

et al. 2021

Nature

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“…They have thus found successful applications in the field of soft matter systems, especially in the colloidal realm [13,14]. The interest in patchy models has further leavened when it has been realized that these models can provide a intermediate coarse-grained representation of protein-protein interactions [15][16][17][18], nucleic acid base pairing [19], not to mention smart applications in material design [20][21][22] and self-assembling into complex target structures [23].…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…(vii) The possibility to design quasicrystal and open ordered structures through a proper selection of the number of patches and their angular position [21,31,32]. In order to guide experiments towards the realization of colloidal diamond, a tetrahedral crystalline structure with photonic properties [23,33], tetrahedral patchy particles models have been extensively studied to uncover the basic assembly principles of these coveted crystals [20,22,34].…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The physics of Empty Liquids: from Patchy particles to Water

Russo,

Leoni,

Martelli

et al. 2021

Preprint

Self Cite

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Empty liquids represent a wide class of materials whose constituents arrange in a random network through reversible bonds. Many key insights on the physical properties of empty liquids have originated almost independently from the study of colloidal patchy particles on one side, and a large body of theoretical and experimental research on water on the other side. Patchy particles represent a family of coarse-grained potentials that allows for a precise control of both the geometric and the energetic aspects of bonding, while water has arguably the most complex phase diagram of any pure substance, and a puzzling amorphous phase behavior. It was only recently that the exchange of ideas from both fields has made it possible to solve long-standing problems and shed new light on the behavior of empty liquids. Here we highlight the connections between patchy particles and water, focusing on the modelling principles that make an empty liquid behave like water, including the factors that control the appearance of thermodynamic and dynamic anomalies, the possibility of liquid-liquid phase transitions, and the crystallization of open crystalline structures.

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Designing Patchy Interactions to Self-Assemble Arbitrary Structures

Cited by 35 publications

References 50 publications

Facile self-assembly of colloidal diamond from tetrahedral patchy particles via ring selection

Facile self-assembly of colloidal diamond from tetrahedral patchy particles via ring selection

How to design an icosahedral quasicrystal through directional bonding

The physics of Empty Liquids: from Patchy particles to Water

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